


broken restraints

by tenderwrites



Series: #tendouweek [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: #tendouweek, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Blood and Injury, Bullying, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hair-pulling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 10:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14669193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenderwrites/pseuds/tenderwrites
Summary: #tendouweek day 1 - childhood/futureEveryone knows who he is. Tendou Satori, the 'monster'. The kid with a red-coloured bowl cut and nightmarish eyes, and that all of his features make him look like he did something wrong in his past life.But do people really know who he is? The things he does that makes him happy, the mother he has which dotes on him wholeheartedly ever since their father departed from the family, the bullies he has which make him want to go somewhere else to thrive and live.This is a story of his life, one which makes people sympathize and reflect on further.





	broken restraints

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up one day late to #tendouweek with hot chocolate because I don't drink coffee*
> 
> In my defense, I had schoolwork to take care of and on top of that, I came down with the flu which I still have. This work will be the first of many to come. 
> 
> I decided to do the theme of childhood because a lot of people seem to forget that this red-haired goof was bullied in elementary school, and it saddens me to know that some people hate him. 
> 
> Anyway, I'll do my best for my favourite boy's week \\(★ω★)/
> 
> Music for this fic: The Neighbourhood - Prey

#tendouweek day 1 - childhood/future 

The heat of the afternoon sun is strong, and it beats down on Satori’s back. In lieu of this fact, he keeps his eyes fixated on the rubber tarmac of the playground. Moreover, his toys are nowhere to be seen, and he has nowhere to focus his attention towards. In the distance, there is yelling accompanied by a taunting tone, and it rings loud and clear inside his ears.

“Satori is a monster! Look at his hair and eyes!” The first child sounds like a male, but his maturity falls short of even a hormonal teenager, and all he hears is high-pitched laughing echoing around him. A few hands jostle him around and one lone hand catches onto his head, which makes him topple over like a broken china doll. He feels empty, as if someone cut out a piece of his abdomen and left him there to bleed out.

The footsteps gradually ebb away into the ambient white noise around him, and when he finds himself in utter solitude, Satori sits up with a wince, blood dripping from a scratched up knee. He is in his favorite spot of the playground; the sandbox, but even that doesn’t excite him anymore. A forgotten sandcastle in the background sways with the wind and he stumbles out of the playground, heading slowly towards the locker in which he hid his bag in.

Stumbling out of the school with one strap of his backpack slung haphazardly across his shoulder, he scans the area for a familiar public telephone. Digging a few coins out of his shorts’ pocket, Satori presses a number and waits for the dial tone to come to a standstill and for a gentle motherly voice to break the silence.

“Hello? Satori, is that you? Why are you calling me?”

His bottom lip trembled with the soothing voice of his emotional support.

“...M-om? I...I don’t want to go to school anymore…” Satori stammered, the tears pooling in his eyes threatening to spill over and wreck his rough exterior. Other than him, there was no one in the street, save for a pair of stray cats who watched silently as the mysterious red-haired child tried to keep himself together for yet another time that day.

“Satori, why not? Did those kids bully you again? Oh, you poor thing…Do you want me to come home?” At the mention of those last words, Satori almost bursts into tears, but a crooked and giddy smile appears on his face.

“I...You can stay at work. Don’t need to worry ‘bout me.” The smile falters, and the phone in Satori’s hands shakes violently. With the best of intentions, the young volleyball player does not want his mother to worry, and as there is only the two of them left, the burden has become increasingly heavy to carry on both of his mother’s shoulders.

He should act like a man and not whine for his mother all the time, like his bullies sneered at him.

“...Alright. Are you able to go home on your own?” Satori’s mother lowers her voice, which seems to go unnoticed by the elementary school boy. He tries to wipe away his tears but his puffy red eyes are a dead giveaway that he is a wimp. The phone in his weak hands is at risk of clattering to the floor, and so he gives a quick answer.

“Yes. Bye, Mom.” The phone is latched back onto its holder, and Satori adjusts his backpack so that both straps are now on his shoulders.

_Deal with this on your own, Satori._

He walks no further than five steps before tears are once again streaming down his face, which shatters his mental state and he cries out mournfully, which goes unnoticed by absolutely everyone in the neighboring houses. At his back, he feels a million pair of eyes on him, which grow mouths and start snickering at him in synchronization.

If anyone had gone out of their houses to organize their rubbish or to water the plants, they would have seen a boy with a nerdy-looking haircut and nightmare-inducing eyes, and would immediately shied away from him in terror.

_Monster. Monster. Monster._

_Satori is a monster._

The intrusive thoughts are back in his mind, and he wishes with all of his might that they disappear like his bullies do at the end of every single day.

\---

“ _Tadaima_.” Satori mutters under his breath, all formalities forgotten as his bag is dumped by the shoe rack. Something tumbles out of it, but the boy hasn’t the heart to bring it to his room. His shoes are toed off and thrown by the umbrella holder. The birds and bees flutter around the greenery outside his house which he would normally grasp at the chance to chase after, but the blinds are drawn, casting a shadow over the walkway en route to the kitchen.

Cracking open the freezer, he searches the interior for a familiar packaging, one which always brings a smile to his face no matter what he had been through that day, or whether there was a fresh bruise on his knee that had him close to tears. Unfortunately, all he finds is a plastic bag that contains fresh salmon fish and a strange bug that had sealed its fate in the back of the compartment. With a huff, he slams the freezer door shut, making the fridge shiver.

_Stupid school. Stupid bullies._

_Stupid Satori._

He crawls to a corner of the kitchen with his head tucked in between his hands and stares at the floor, the deafening ringing again intruding his head space. Suddenly, he recalls something from his memory and runs towards the bathroom, only to be met with a doppelganger of himself. Satori extends his fingers to rest on the mirror, which run over the curves of his face and the dips of his eyes. His eye holes seem too big to be natural for a child, and his head seems to be mocking him for being too big.

All of it looks hideous, disgusting and contorted.

Satori crumples to the floor, his hands crawling over his scalp as he pulls at his hair, the mirror image of himself encrypted into his memory. A few of his hair strands fall to the floor and his back arches forward as sobs make him sigh and exhale forcibly.

 _Why couldn’t he be born with a_ **_normal-looking_ ** _face?_

He snatches the nearest bulky-looking object; his mother’s hair dryer, and with all of his might, flings it towards the mirror and lands a successful hit. The mirror in mention splinters into a million tiny pieces and he glances at the mirror once again after his triumph against his greatest enemy.

His looks are now split into a thousand other planes of view, his red hair now frazzled into a strange-looking hairdo and his wrists, bleeding from the tiny cuts, look like tree branches that have snapped in half.

The loud, hurried footsteps behind him go unheard and in a flash, another mop of hair the colour of his oozing blood appears behind him.

“Satori!” A pained scream bounces off every wall in the house and makes the boy’s head whip around in surprise. A pair of warm, tight arms wrap around his tiny waist and hoists him into the air, while the woman behind him cries out with every ounce of strength that she has.

“...M-Mom?” An impossibly soft whimper breaks the silence the same way as the destroyed mirror, and Satori feels like weeping again.

“Come on, let’s get you patched up.” With her son in her arms, Satori’s mother jogs towards the kitchen, where she holds his wrists under cold running water, soothing his hisses of pain with a comforting massage through his messy hair. After thoroughly washing his wounds, she hunts the kitchen’s every nook and cranny for the first aid kit and quickly wraps up his cuts in bandages printed with cartoon characters from his favorite television show.

She cuts off the last extra piece of bandage from his arm and stands back to look at Satori, who looks away from her steady gaze with shame hung in his bent neck. 

“...Satori, do you remember when we stood in front of the mirror one day to look at your reflection?” She says, with conviction stark in her tone and her hands gently cupping the elementary school boy’s cheeks.

“N-No?”

“It’s okay if you don’t remember. I’ll tell you about it. I told you one thing that mattered a lot to you. It’s ‘your eyes are beautiful’.” With the prompt in his lineup of memories, Satori starts to recollect his thoughts when the both of them had stood in front of the mirror that day.

\---

_"Satori?”_

_"Yes Mom?” He had answered with an inquiring tone embedded in his voice, while his fingers twirled a pen grasped between his fingers. This was just one of his many nervous habits, practices he’d picked up while having nothing to do and hardly anybody to talk to. The worst of his habits showed through his ugly and callused fingers, which were almost always covered in cartoonish plasters his mother bought from the pharmacy down the street._

_“I want you to remember this. Look at yourself in the mirror. Do you see your eyes?”_

_“...They’re the same color as my hair, aren’t they? Red, just like yours.” Satori had answered with pride, his heart beaming with happiness at the thought that he shared the same pretty hair as his mother._

_"Yes, they are. But not only that, Satori.” She had stopped for dramatic effect, which made her son impatient and he stopped shaking the poor pen, just to stare up at his mother’s eyes with an intense stare, a gaze which he’d hoped to spur his mother into talking._

_“Not only that?” He asked further, hands pulling at the hem of his mother’s shirt._

_“Your eyes are beautiful. They have the prettiest shade of red, and whoever you love later on in life, I’m sure they will cherish it.” His mother’s eyes sparkled with pride, and the boy swore he could see constellations dancing in her irises. His itchy hands longed just to touch her eyes and finally get a taste of the stars he had wanted to feel, but Satori knew that was rude and so kept his hands tightly balled up in his pockets._

_“But Mom, you have the same eyes as mine and Dad doesn’t mention them.”_

_“...You’ll understand soon enough, Satori.” She flashes a sad smile at Satori, who cocks his head quizzically at his mother’s enigmatic words._

\---

“...My eyes are beautiful, aren’t they?” Satori says as he looks up at his mother for affirmation. It is more of a reassurance than a question, and the woman nods vigorously, with endless oceans building up beside her charming eyes. 

She does not mention the bullying at school, or any other emotional trauma that Satori has gone through. Instead, she carries the boy back to his room and tucks him under the blanket, later fetching a tub of chocolate ice cream for Satori to savor in his own temporary haven. The birds are singing outside the boy’s window and his mother draws the blinds to welcome the sunlight. She sits next to her son and holds him in a tight embrace.

“Whatever you do in life, Satori, I will be there for you. Do not listen to what anyone else says about you. No matter what, I love you, and I will never leave you.”

At this, Satori cracks a wide, giddy grin, amid the countless ice-cream remnants on his face and his pale complexion.

The tub is half-full and he feels invincible, invincible enough to block out any setback that he might encounter in the future.

  
  
  
  
  



End file.
